The 13th month would be named Sol—every month would have Friday the 13th

September 25, 2018 6:26 PM

The Death and Life of the 13-Month Calendar: Apropos of alternate time/calendar discussion in MetaTalk, check out CityLab's article on the International Fixed Calendar, which Kodak used for decades. (Previously: AskMe and MeFi calendar posts.)

Bonus: Reading about this put "Think of the Time I Save" from The Pajama Game in my head.

posted by limeonaire (45 comments total)

“They stole our 11 days but now they’re giving us 13 months!”

Anyway, the biggest problem with all these ideas is explaining to small children what has happened to their birthday.
posted by fallingbadgers at 7:16 PM on September 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

I mean, just pick the same day of the year and tell them the government changed the way calanders work. That's what the rest of us would do.

Like, the logical extension of that is to get rid of months altogether, and just number the days 1 through 365. Just get a stardate sorta thing going.

"My birthday is Day 190." Hmm. The world's getting pretty dystopian anyway.
posted by Caduceus at 8:18 PM on September 25, 2018 [6 favorites]

This is really interesting, thanks.
posted by Caduceus at 8:19 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

So many Friday the 13ths.
posted by user92371 at 8:32 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

I did one of these a few years ago...
posted by jim in austin at 8:42 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

A problem I don't hear too much about with this is that it breaks the ancient seven-day cycle. Even when there's a leap day, even when we switched from Julian to Gregorian calendars, as far as I know we've always had Thursdays precede Fridays precede Saturdays precede Sundays and so on. Sure it makes the math work out to insert a "none of the above day" sometimes but people who Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy will not accept that. So now the civil calendar and religious calendars are decoupled.

I'm not super-fond of a world where we have to track (and let's be honest, probably argue) the difference between Abrahamic Wednesday and atheist Wednesday. If we're going down that road might as well make a clean break and adopt a decimal calendar. Happy 4 Vendémiaire everyone!
posted by traveler_ at 8:44 PM on September 25, 2018 [6 favorites]

the biggest problem with all these ideas is explaining to small children what has happened to their birthday.

Well, that and the fact that 2/7th of the population end up with their birthday being a Monday or Tuesday in perpetuity.
posted by pompomtom at 8:47 PM on September 25, 2018 [4 favorites]

And what, Halloween is cancelled forever? Hard pass.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:03 PM on September 25, 2018 [5 favorites]

World Seasonal calendar
posted by Brian B. at 9:04 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

My birthday would become Friday Sol 13th... nah
posted by cirhosis at 9:08 PM on September 25, 2018

As a workforce planner I adore the idea of a 13 period calendar. Nice neat Prior Calendar Period charts, scheduled hour comparisons that reflect the same duration for each month, no difficulties with estimating weekly call patterns around Christmas because it's on a different day of the week, and Easter? Augh; don't get me started on damned Easter. I love it, right up until the point where I have to explain it to someone else.
posted by MarchHare at 9:20 PM on September 25, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm in. I'm going to refer to all dates in this manner from now on, and just use this. If other people are confused or don't want to play, that's on them.
posted by el io at 9:39 PM on September 25, 2018 [4 favorites]

Just reminds me of “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” by Harlan Ellison.

On the 32nd of October...
posted by daq at 10:00 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

World Seasonal calendar

...seems to unreasonably assume four seasons.
posted by pompomtom at 10:23 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Excuse me, but today is Tuesday, September 9156, 1993.
posted by ckape at 11:01 PM on September 25, 2018 [9 favorites]

yes it doesn't seem to support monsoons well
posted by mbo at 11:03 PM on September 25, 2018

The version of this calendar I'm rather fond of is the Tranquility Calendar, which sets its 0-day as the first landing on the moon, and renames all the months for scientists, in alphabetical order.

I'm curious how acceptable a version of any of these 13-monthers would be, if they just got rid of the leap-days being outside the weekday cycle, and let the days-of-the-month drift "naturally".
posted by DataPacRat at 11:22 PM on September 25, 2018

Start living on your preferred calendar and clock now (with the understanding that your government, employer, school, and local businesses may operate on different systems that don't quite suit you). Set up some servers to make sure everyone on a certain calendar and clock is synchronized. Let your apps do all the conversions for you. Eventually people would converge on the most popular or useful systems.
posted by pracowity at 12:06 AM on September 26, 2018

Or we can just let the local warlords decide which to use
posted by thelonius at 12:34 AM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Eventually people would converge on the most popular or useful systems.

We did that already.
posted by ryanrs at 12:40 AM on September 26, 2018 [11 favorites]

The British rail industry uses a calendar based on 13 four week “reporting periods”. Apple uses its own calendar where each quarter has a five week month followed by two four week months (it’s how app developers get paid). I’m sure other businesses must do the same.
posted by grahamparks at 12:55 AM on September 26, 2018

We did that already.

We did that back when calendars were decreed from above, printed on paper, and hard to convert on the fly. When calendars redraw themselves in instantly and everyone is linked electronically and can convert instantly from one system to another other, different things might happen.
posted by pracowity at 12:58 AM on September 26, 2018

I was surprised to learn that Friday 13th has no negative associations for Italians, whereas they consider Friday 17th unlucky. This calendar might've had a better chance of taking off in Italy, perhaps, given that its 17ths are all Tuesdays.
posted by misteraitch at 1:42 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

"My birthday is Day 190." Hmm. The world's getting pretty dystopian anyway.

JOYOUS NATAL COMMEMORATION CELEBRATION, CITIZEN. HERE IS YOUR REGULATION 75 GRAMS OF:

CAKE, SHEET, VANILLA, FROSTED

AND 120 SECONDS IN WHICH TO ENJOY IT. EXCEEDING YOUR ALLOTTED CAKE ENJOYMENT TIME IS PUNISHABLE BY RE-EDUCATION.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:50 AM on September 26, 2018 [19 favorites]

Obviously the re-education includes additional cake servings? Practice makes perfect.
posted by Vesihiisi at 3:52 AM on September 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was just watching a related clip from Neil D Tyson about this yesterday.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 4:53 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sure it makes the math work out to insert a "none of the above day" sometimes but people who Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy will not accept that. So now the civil calendar and religious calendars are decoupled.

As far as I can tell, Jews have been dealing with this for centuries - ask me when Passover is and I'll just look it up online, ask my mom and she'll look at her physical paper calendar planner thing that she makes sure has the Jewish holidays on it every year and amends with additional less important holidays via their synagogue's calendar. I mean, sure, Shabbat's always on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, but it's always more about a cycle than the specific length of said cycle. Besides:

I'm not super-fond of a world where we have to track (and let's be honest, probably argue) the difference between Abrahamic Wednesday and atheist Wednesday.

I'm certain there'd be arguing. There'd be so much arguing and rabbis would be so happy about it. Something new! Something punchy and relevant! Bring it on!
posted by Mizu at 5:08 AM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Wait, how many rent payments will I make each year?
posted by Wilbefort at 5:41 AM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

...seems to unreasonably assume four seasons.

Two solstices and two equinoxes then. Any solar calendar naturally goes there. I think Asimov noted some push back from religious authority over holy day bickering related to lunar references.
posted by Brian B. at 6:22 AM on September 26, 2018

Its certain that this would result in a 1/12 increase in annual cost for all rents, service contracts, phone and cable bills; yet with no corresponding increase in annual wages.
posted by yesster at 6:53 AM on September 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Dave Gorman has a similar system, with the new month being called Gormanuary:

"In the new system, we will nail Easter down"
posted by moonface at 6:59 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

"Easter? Augh; don't get me started on damned Easter. I love it, right up until the point where I have to explain it to someone else."

It would still float, because these are all solar calendars and Easter -- like Passover -- is set using a luni-solar calendar.

(And if anyone asks, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, it's easy!)

I could have sworn the Chicago police or fire department used a five-day-week calendar (maybe called the "international peace calendar" or something like that?) for a while during the mania for rationalizing calendars in the 30s, and it persisted for quite a while because using a 10-day scheduling cycle for emergency service workers turned out to work a lot better than 7- or 14-day cycles. But in the end, being that out of sync with the rest of the world was more difficult than just adjusting to occasional weird blips to accommodate 7- or 14-day cycles. But this is impossible to google thanks to Dick Wolf and his 8 billion Chicago shows.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:59 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Get back to me after we've gotten rid of daylight savings time and I'll start thinking about adopting this new calendar. One fight at a time, fellas.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 8:00 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

From the magnificent You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform

You advocate a
  ( ) solar ( ) lunar ( ) lunisolar
approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is why:

(...)

  (x) having one or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid
  (x) your name for the thirteenth month is questionable
  (x) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into seven-day weeks

(...)

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

  (x) good luck trying to move the Fourth of July
  (x) the history of calendar reform is insanely complicated and no amount of
      further calendar reform can make it simpler

posted by andycyca at 8:05 AM on September 26, 2018 [13 favorites]

We really need to adjust the Moon's orbit around the Earth so that the Lunar and Solar calendars match up. Probably need to tweak the Earth's spin too while we're at it.

I guess we could do it by altering the Earth's orbit around the Sun but that's just crazytalk.
posted by whuppy at 8:12 AM on September 26, 2018

THIS IS CETI ALPHA V!!!!
posted by thelonius at 8:38 AM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Eventually people would converge on the most popular or useful systems.

We tried this, and it got us Y2K. (Unix time is getting us Year 2032.)

It turns out that people converge on the most expedient systems at a particular time, with little regard for how well that's going to work out down the road.

Some top-down standardization, it turns out, is probably useful to keep people from making bonehaded choices that other people will have to clean up after they're dead/retired/working-on-something-else.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:24 AM on September 26, 2018

Except for the calendar companies, it seems to work out to no one's advantage

Finally, someone willing to stand up to Big Calendar!
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 9:41 AM on September 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Gotta start counting weeks on Mondays to avoid the Friday the 13th thing. I've seen calendars that do this already, which makes a lot more sense to me than Sunday, anyway.

I mean, for crying out loud, people, it's called a weekend, not a "weekend and also new week beginning".
posted by rokusan at 11:36 AM on September 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

( ) Discordianism is not very funny

Hmpf.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:44 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

I mean, for crying out loud, people, it's called a weekend, not a "weekend and also new week beginning".

It's not a weekending, it's a weekend. Like how there are two ends of a loaf of bread, or two ends of a rope.
posted by Etrigan at 12:01 PM on September 26, 2018

The long-time treasurer of my old volunteer fire department worked for Kodak and our meeting room always had one of those Kodak calendars. Everyone but him hated it. You couldn't just glance up and find a date, you had to study it for a bit to get the pattern. We literally cheered when he retired and couldn't get those calendars anymore.
posted by tommasz at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2018

The Jewish calendar already has thirteen months: an intercalary month is added every so often to keep the calendar years anchored to solar years. It works surprisingly well for that purpose; not so much for things that require knowing future dates without reference to a calendar.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:03 PM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sure, just go ahead and give the 25-hour day Mars rover teams at JPL even more anxiety.
posted by Brocktoon at 12:03 AM on September 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

lousy smarch weather!
posted by Divine_Wino at 5:28 PM on September 27, 2018